It’s All About Sidewalks: Tips to Help You Catch Up in CityVille

CityVille surpassed the 100 million player mark at the beginning of the year, which is a whole lot of people to compete with. Not that it’s a competitive game, but it’s always more fun when you aren’t behind your friends. Here are some new tips to help Cityville newcomers catch up and veteran city builders advance their metropolis:

1. Sidewalks count as roads and not all buildings need them.

If you’re hungry for space in your city, it helps to know that roads aren’t necessary. Most buildings need to be connected to a path, but a sidewalk counts. Maybe Zynga had Paolo Soleiri in mind as they suggest that a great community can be purely pedestrian. Regardless, each road tile is almost the size of a home or business that could be making you money instead of hogging space. Also important is the fact that community buildings don’t need to connect to a road or sidewalk at all. Feel free to throw that hospital in BFE CityVille.

2. Don’t forget to decorate.

Decorations aren’t just aesthetic. They boost the payouts of homes and businesses in their beautifying range. Plan your city with room for regular room for decorations. Power players can sigificantly work wonders when they optimize their layouts. This video shows how to boost a highrise payout by 272%!

3. Expansive franchises are worth more.

In case you haven’t noticed, your franchise HQ adds floors every time you expand to another friend’s city. While it may be fun to put a coffee franchise in one city and a toy franchise in another, there is a financial reward to commiting to the expansion of one type of business. Hunt down the franchise lots in friend’s cities and add the same one whenever possible. Pretty soon, you’ll have a towering franchise HQ worth way more coin.

4. Neighbor groups can be an easy way to expand your friends.

Not everyone has a lot friends that enjoy social games. That’s where neighbor groups and community pages come in. The CityVille fan page alone is strewn with comments of people requesting new neighbors. There are also Facebook groups dedicated solely to meeting and adding new neighbors. The catch to this is that you have to add these people to your Facebook friend list. For some people this is no problem as they happily collect friends like they’re Pokemon. For others, it may seem a bit odd to add a complete stranger. If you’re desperate, you can read more about setting the privacy options for limiting what some friends have access to on your Facebook page.